spirit of ancient days inhabits it, invisible and hidden in the hours when our attention is duped and distracted by multiplicity of sights, but present always, ceaselessly busy, keeping the inhabitants one, leading the infants to work as their fathers have worked on the sides of the same mountain, on the same villages, and around the same belfries.14

The spirit of other ages indeed plays over the book as over the district. Ramuntcho and his friend in all their young strength stand conquered by the strength of the past. Gracieuse remains safe in her convent because before "the peace of that cloister, before the whiteness and quietude of that life. they feel themselves vanquished." The spirit of the past has enshrined itself in those convent walls.

Now before the peace of the cloister, before the whiteness and all the solemn calm, they feel their courage fail little by little. Both are unbelievers: and yet these symbols empty of all significance have kept enough of might to put them to flight. What good, then, to fight? Why try to set oneself free and employ our powers in useless revolts? Let us try to submit ourselves, to resign ourselves. Keep the traditions of our fathers, which join us to the men of past days as to those of the future. Behind venerable and consecrated formulas are hidden perhaps all that we can know of unknowable truths. To do the same things which our ancestors have done through countless ages, to say blindly the same words of faith, is supreme wisdom, supreme strength.19

This thought, new in Loti's works, alien to his childhood's faith, alien to the spirit of the age, might seem to be inherent in the air of France itself: something stronger than early impressions, stronger than the experience of life, has laid its hand upon him and, 18"Etudes sur la Littérature Française," p.

162.

19"Etudes sur la Littérature Française," p.

165.

unconsciously perhaps, he is taken cap tive; the spirit of place arising from the very clods.

The touching and not unromantic history of the family of Margueritte, to which the two brother novelists Paul and Victor Margueritte belong, is told in M. Pilon's little monograph, which bears their name and is published in Les Célebrités d'Aujourd'hui, a series of very useful and inexpensive guides to current French literature.

While the brothers have written much which will be forgotten, and while their views on some social questions will always make them unpopular with orthodox French thought, their volume Le Désastre ranks deservedly very high among the works of the past ten years. It deals with the Franco-Prussian War. and in that war they had an hereditary interest. The French are of all people most alive to "les parfums du passé,” to the shadowy influences of childish days; and very few French authors who have made their mark in literature quite escape from these influences. MM. Paul and Victor Margueritte certainly do not, and with them the bias is an eminently noble one. We learn from M. Pilon's monograph that their father was a general in the French army, and that he was born in the little village of Manheulles, between Verdun and Metz. But he had made his home in Algeria, where his sons passed their childhood among its luxuriant vegetation, its mysterious sandy wastes. in the little Arab town with "its scent of oranges, its narrow Arabian streets where the sound of flutes and the incense of burning cedar-dust filter over the walls," 20 described with all a Frenchman's not unworthy sentiment in Le Jardin du Passé. General Margueritte fell a victim wtih many another brave man in the "fantastique charge du calvaire d'Illy, qui fut le seul éclat de gloire sur la boue de Se20Le Jardin du Passé.

dan." 21 His death was as splendidly heroic as any imaginary episode in a novel; it was not surprising, then, that his sons, although Paul was only ten, Victor only six at the time of their father's death, should have felt compelled to write the history, in after years, of that most disastrous war.

We venture to say that Le Désastre is a great book. It is written with self-restraint, with good taste. Its moral conceptions are lofty. The authors seem to have had ever before their minds a consideration of the ethics of war, its effect upon the mind and on the conduct. Their calmness, too, is admirable, but it never leads to dullness. There are no hysterical outbursts, but there is never any want of deep and proper feeling-feeling for their country's failings and misfortunes; feeling for the many hearts broken by war, the many dead who are found on no battlefields, in no hospitals, for the many unknown heroes who are shovelled into nameless graves; feeling, perhaps rare in their nation, for the heroism of the horses, that heroism which has no thought of glory, none of reward.

To have kept a just balance of mind when every heartstring of the writers must have vibrated to the wrongs and misfortunes of the French forces, to have looked at all the side issues, and been just even to the enemy without. and to the authors of misfortunes within, their own camp, is almost unknown in history or in politics. But the brothers Margueritte have shown themselves eminently fair and just and far-seeing. Even for their leaders they have pity: the "prestige du malheur" is seen at its full value. For Bazaine, that strange, enigmatical figure, there is "indignation tempered by wonder." And is not one great factor in the ill success of the French arms summed up

"E. Pilon, "Paul et Victor Margueritte" (Paris: Sansot, 1903), p. 11.

in a sentence which might well become a proverb: "Combien d'hommes de qui la médiocrité a été le véritable crime" ?*

M. Doumic in his Etudes sur la Littérature Française has summed up the strength of the book in better words than we can find, and they are, too, the words of a Frenchman who has felt the whole as we in England cannot perhaps hope to do.

The authors of Le Désastre [he writes] have told all, the errors, the faults, the levity, the want of foresight, the hesitations, the delays, the lost time, the want of co-operation, the contradictory orders, the infatuations, the rivalries, the misunderstandings of the authorities. They have told the miseries, the disgrace: the town surrendered when it might have still been held, the army of 170,000 men given up when it could have opened a passage for itself, the abandonment of stores which might be used against ourselves, the colors and the eagles, of which a list was made in order that the evidence of our disgrace might be complete; the train which carried the officers stopped while a troop of their own men were defiled past it on their way to captivity, and forced to take up a position before the road of triumph, which was made to the quarters of the Prussian army by overshadowing tricolors. Ils nous ont fait gravir tout le calvaire.23

But they have never once, while being thus splendidly truthful, forgotten that they were Frenchmen. The pen which wrote these things "has trembled in their hands." They must be just: they yet could not cease to feel all that must be felt in such a page of their history. And they have never lost heart. "The book which yet can comfort us is a long recital of miseries-this book from which we go forth more confident," says M. Doumic, "in the vitality of our country, only recounts hours of bitter distress."

22 Etudes sur la Littérature Française," p. 296. 23 Ibid." p. 294.

And to readers of this Review it will not be uninteresting to note the respectful attitude of the book towards Christianity. Du Breuil seeks for a priest to perform the last offices for his friend: at the funeral service, he, with many another, finds himself moved once more by the incomparable splendor of Catholic ritual. "The same emotion of remembrance softened many of the rude military faces around him. They dreamt, in this return to their own hearts, of the many varying events which religion makes its own, in life, in death." 21

And perhaps we shall congratulate ourselves, French literature being what it is, that there is so little of what we generally call romance in this book. M. Doumic indeed finds that little too much. Where war is the drama, history the romance, he finds the little episode of the opal ring and the sweet, ple figure of Anine out of place. here, too. the authors have been selfrestrained.

But

Le Désastre is the finest of the brothers' collaborated works. The two succeeding volumes of the trilogy, Les Braves Gens and La Commune, do not equal it in force, and the subject is even more painful, as the title of the latter shows.

M. Paul Margueritte commenced his work as an author without his brother's help, but when ill and unable for a time to continue his contributions to current literature alone, his younger brother, a lieutenant of dragoons, came to his aid, and hence the work "pensée par les deux." But before this happy collaboration took place, M. Paul Margueritte had written at least one book which we venture to think ranks high in spite of some faults. "Jours d' Epreuves," says M. Jules Lemaître in Les Contemporains, "is sane, is true; it is sad, it is strengthening." It is the

14 "Le Désastre, p. 426.

"25

25 "Les Contemporains," 5th series, 1898, p. 30.

story of a young couple taught by poverty, and rising higher under its discipline instead of sinking to lower depths; and although the book is not all we could wish, its lessons are yet salutary, its moral tendency high.

M. Edouard Rod was, we believe. brought up in Switzerland, and much of the austerity of the Protestant cantons shows itself in his somewhat cold manner and perhaps in his melancholy. But he has little love for the doctrines of Protestantism, that

rationalizing religion, compromise between dogma and common sense, of which the dialectic and exegesis are lamentably poor, of which the icy worship is only one endless discourse-a string of halting metaphors-of a strueture so feeble that a child could break it, recited in a melancholy voice with false action and whining intonationthis religion which cavils instead of loving, and parcels itself out into rancorous sects around texts of the Apocalypse.20

But, as we note this, we must not forget M. Rod's exquisite portrait of the Protestant "Mademoiselle," old. poor, who turns the yellow leaves of her brown Bible, while her fingers open upon "radiant passages"; who in "her lonely silences when saddest recollections might fill her memory with tears," hears the celestial voice murmuring the invitation, "Come unto Me"; and "the splendid Hereafter which shines in the Divine words. would it not make her forget through all eternity the evils which attend upon this short life?" 27

But even here he cannot refrain from the jarring note. He goes to his old friend's funeral, and the pastor who. with raised hands and closed eyes, and a lachrymose voice, repeats the funeral oration, repels him afresh. "Ces gensla," he says, "ont le talent de dire ce 26" Le Sens de la Vie," p. 273. 27" Ibid." p. 186.

qu'il ne faut pas, et si les libre-penseurs vous dégoûtèrent de la librepensée, les croyants rendent impossible la foi. . . .”

But for the Mass at St. Sulpice he has only respectful words:

This service is really a fine sight, which impresses not only by the magnificence of the scene and the pomp of the ceremony, but by the world of ideas by which you are there assailed, by that glimpse of the infinite which is suddenly revealed to you. The candles, the incense, the loud sound of the organ, the chanting of the choir and the intonation of the priest arouse within your soul a trouble which further increases the contagious faith with which the kneeling crowd inspires you."

The passage which follows is perhaps long to quote, but we venture to do so, both as an example of M. Rod's very dignified and chastened style, and as showing the remarkable fascination which the Church exercises over the cultivated Frenchman, whether librepenseur or Catholic. Standing under the shadow of St. Sulpice and listening to the service,

it seems to me that, instead of oscillating as if struck by contrary winds, I found myself on a fixed point in the shelter of solid certainty. . . . Around goes the world with its chimeras, its whims, its tempests; the might of kingdoms moulders like ancient walls, the fashion of society changes, great men disappear in oblivion or revolutions overthrow their statues, violence disfigures the work of violence in an unceasing succession of downfall and resurrection: only the Church remains erect, unmoved-fixed by the will of men or of God-what does it matter?-triumphing at last over all its enemies, extending unceasingly the confines of its realm, absorbing early or late in her vast heart the boldest rebellions. ... She is the centre of a whirlwind, is immovable, while atoms dance 28 Le Sens de la Vie," p. 305.

around her, and it is enough to enter for one instant into her circle of action to escape the cyclone which dances and breaks, and destroys around.

She is immovable while everything passes by: that is the truth which the solemn voice of the organ proclaims, it is the truth inscribed in letters of fire on the tapers glittering in the darkness. I know it, and I hear, nevertheless, growling outside, the dull murmur of world which is going to take me captive again; I sport with increased sensibility with this momentary faiththe halt of a Wandering Jew, or the respite of a condemned prisoner. Oh, I would lose myself in the meaning of the prayers, I would stammer the same words as these, which are rising from all these lips. . . ."

20

30

Neither here nor in any part of the book does he show any disrespect to the religion of the Church: "Je trouve que je n'ai plus aucun colère contre la religion-bien au contraire," says the hero is it M. Rod himself?-in Le Sens de la Vie. His picture of the "pauvre vieille femme" "en coiffe noir, en tablier bleu" in the Pantheon, where "on en chassait Dieu pour faire place à Victor Hugo," where "le doux Christ de l'Imitation fuyait devant l'homme des Châtiments, la bonne sainte Vierge de tant d'affectueux miracles devant les Marion Delorme et les Lucrèce Borgia.” It was the day of the désaffectation, and in a corner where an altar remained yet for a moment the old woman knelt "fidèle au Dieu qu'ils chassaient."

She had brought two candles which a cruel breath would extinguish before they were half consumed. Of what grief had she come to lay down the burden there? And when the last altar should have fallen, which of these political quacks would supply her with a means of comfort in her anguish? Then I understood, she was right in spite of all: an instant the flickering 29 Ibid." p. 306. 30"Ibid." p. 113

light of her two tapers appeared to one as the sunshine of truth, and in passing before the altar I bent the knee and made the sign of the cross.31

We have throughout been quoting from M. Rod's most remarkable, and (to our minds) most beautiful book, Le Sens de la Vie. Of plot there may be said to be none. A married couple, an engaging little child, "Bebette"who falls ill and recovers-this is the whole story. But M. Rod belongs to the new school, that school which was a reaction from realism. It concerns itself not with outside things; action and event are of little moment save as food for thought and as the cause of feeling. The outside world, too, is so little to the hero of the bookagain, we say the hero or M. Rod himself, for perhaps the two are interchangeable terms-as he shows when he takes a walk in the Alps, and hardly knows whether he sees the sky, the torrents, the waterfalls; he "disdains their reality to contemplate their reflections in his own heart." And in his first pages he throws down his gauntlet and proclaims the spirit of his book.

"What a fatiguing thing is the genius of man!" he writes from Italy. "After two months passed among the 'chefs-d'œuvre,' we found at last that the most sublime among them was not worth the most humble thought which springs up in our brains, the lightest feeling which makes our own hearts palpitate for a moment." 32

Here is the dominant idea of the book, and if this count of the beatings of one man's heart leaves-as it must leave a feeling of undue egoism in the mind of the reader. it is not the less a human document. And M. Rod is never wearisome. He says many things we would rather not have said, and dwells on many events which it

31 Le Sens de la Vie," p. 116. 32 Ibid." p. 1.

would be better to pass over in silence, but he never shocks by his methods of telling the disagreeable.

We need to remember that Le Sens de la Vie is one man's outlook on life: it is not life. Or rather life is what we make it; and as we read, we-Englishmen-remember another outlook on life: that of a man tossed by many waves of storm and often borne down by hereditary depression, by manifold wants and distresses, but who stood up bravely to meet the inevitable, and could find happiness in little things, in fireside delights, when the "black dog," of which he writes so feelingly, had de parted for a season. We remember Johnson, his gloom and his brave words, and Boswell will be taken down from shelves in moments of depres sion while Le Sens de la Tie will be unopened.

And as one of M. Rod's critics remarks, the whole of this most melancholy book tells only of happy events, the moral whereof to the Christian will be that worldly happiness is insufficient without Christian hope to make the crooked straight, the rough places plain; unless a man can

Raise his repining eyes and take true

measure

Of his eternal treasure,